The Long Shadow of Gus Deeds

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If you are a father, or a son, or the mother or a sister or a wife of one or the other, it is impossible to count the number of ways this saga of Creigh Deeds and his son is horrifying. The simple human tragedy is awful enough.

Even as the brutal attack was underway, Deeds said he wasn't aware of what was happening. He just could not believe his son was capable of nearly killing him. "I said, 'Gus, I love you so much.' I said, 'Don't make it any worse than it already is, son,'" Deeds told CNN. "The first blow to y back was pretty close to a spot where he could have drawn a lot of blood...The second punctured a lung. There was a good bit of blood...He could have killed me. No question about it," Deeds said matter-of-factly. "He had that gun." At that point, Deeds prefers to think his son had a change of heart. "I like to think that Gus, at some point in that attack, the old Gus came back," Deeds said wistfully.

And the public policy implications of the story should shame an industrialized nation. On the day that his son attacked him, and then took his own life, Deeds tried everything to get his son committed to a facility in which he could get something approximating the proper care...or at least put him in a place where he couldn't kill himself or someone else. The best he could do -- And remember that the Deeds family is comfortably well off. Imagine what a poor family's options are. -- was get his son a bed the next day, which would turn out to be too late.

"The system failed my son," Deeds concluded. "He was very ill. He was obviously delusional. I mean, the system let him down. It's inexcusable," Deeds accused. The Virginia state senator blames what he calls "nineteenth century" state laws and is determined to change those laws to help the mentally unstable, partly blaming the bad economy several years ago when, Deeds says, the additional money that was appropriated for mental health services in the wake of the mass shooting at Virginia Tech was "taken away."Deeds says he knows that part of the law won't change, but he is determined to get legislation passed that mandates an up-to-date database of psychiatric beds available in the state, this in the wake of reports showing there were, in fact, a handful of beds available to Gus Deeds that fateful night. To find a bed now, Deeds says, basically involves a mental health professional "just calling around." Deeds has also introduced a bill that would mandate a 24-hour period during which a mental evaluation must occur. Right now in Virginia, it's four hours with a two-hour extension, something Deeds is convinced hurt his son.

Read the whole thing. This country fails too many of its citizens, and money is the worst excuse ever for doing so.